PHOENIX—Christopher Pierson, a glassy-eyed, slothful lump of a child who still watches cartoons despite being tall enough to reach a polymer-injection molding station, was endlessly praised Monday for recalling the scant 26 letters in the American alphabet.

Pierson reportedly rattled off the short series of guttural vowels and lumbering, artless consonants after 10 minutes of prompting, a feat that—judging from his overly indulgent teacher's reaction—must rival the great triumph of launching a satellite into orbit. Though witnesses said the unremarkable 4-year-old may also have slurred the letters "L" through "O" into one continuous stream of nonsense, he somehow avoided immediate expulsion and reassignment to a rural millet farm.

"Good job, Christopher!" said teacher Heather Warner, lauding the child for his meager and wholly meritless accomplishment. "You can go play with your blocks now."

Warner then gave the boy a star-shaped sticker, explaining that he had learned the unsophisticated system of characters containing no ideogrammic compounds or transformed cognates more quickly than she'd expected.

Although no carbon monoxide leaks were reported in the school building, Pierson was later witnessed to lie down on the floor of his classroom, where he, along with 23 other woefully inadequate children, fell temporarily asleep.鱼